Visit provides a glimpse into Polynesian life
Remote Marquesas Islands’ riches include lush vegetation, ancient tikis and a haka troupe
FRENCH POLYNESIA— The atoll emerges like a verdant ribbon from the South Pacific, palms and mangroves clinging to the coral-covered lip of an eroded volcano that some 800 people call home.
The only landmark that stands above Fakarava’s trees and modest bungalows is a pyramidal stone lighthouse, where bonfires burned before the atoll had electricity.
Bicycling along Fakarava’s narrow crescent road, there are times you can see either edge of it: dark crashing waves, then its tranquil turquoise lagoon.
Located in the Tuamotu Archipelago, Fakarava is our first stop on a more-than 1,400-kilometre voyage from Tahiti to the Marquesas Islands: the wild, remote fringe of French Polynesia — a semi-autonomous collection of 118 islands and atolls scattered across the South Pacific Ocean. Roughly 10,000 people inhabit six of the Marquesan archipelago’s 15 isles.
Our ride, the 126-metre Aranui 5, is a working freighter that has been fused to a cruise ship.
Carrying up to 3,300 tonnes of cargo that can include anything from cars to livestock to 254 passengers, there’s nothing quite like it.
“The Aranui is the umbilical cord between Tahiti and the Marquesas,” says Faaora Faraire, our ship’s young captain.
On our fourth day at dawn, we catch our first glimpse of the isolated archipelago in the form of the island of Nuku Hiva’s peaks, towering some1,200 metres above the sea as wisps of mist meander through its lush vales.
A manta ray cruises alongside the ship as it goes to anchor in Nuku Hiva’s bay of Taipivai. Here, 175 years ago, 23-year-old Herman Melville had been “ministered to by dark-eyed nymphs” as the comfortable captive of a “tribe of cannibals.” Melville’s experiences among the “face-tattooed natives” would form the basis of the Moby Dick author’s first book, Typee.
The Aranui 5’s landing crafts spill us onto a beach of dark, volcanic sand. We’re ushered into 4-x-4s for a winding mountain drive through valleys overflowing with coconut palms and breadfruit trees. In the distance, waterfalls wave down precipitous cliffs.
“This is a very sacred place,” Mila Magahafanau, the Aranui 5’s head guide tells us at the Mea’e Kamuihei archeological site, a cluster of ancient stone platforms and petroglyphs, where villagers would feast, warriors would be tattooed and humans would be sacrificed under the stony gaze of tiki idols — the Polynesians’ deified ancestors.
“This place was in movement, of course, until the arrival of the Europeans, when after epidemics established themselves in all the archipelago,” Magahafanau says. The French, she adds, suppressed the Marquesan’s ancient culture from the mid-19th century right up to the 1980s.
“This area,” she laments, “was completely abandoned.”
Nearby, we’re treated to a traditional Marquesan meal of poisson cru — raw fish garnished with coconut milk, vegetables and lime juice — and umu: a whole pig roasted for hours underground, wrapped in banana leaves alongside taro, manioc and breadfruit.
In Taiohae, Nuku Hiva’s largest settlement, you’re just as likely to see a pickup truck as a horse-riding teenager on the town’s quiet, leafy streets. Moored in its tiny port, the Aranui 5 unloads freight and hoists away the island’s bounty; its twin cranes engaged in an intricate aerial ballet.
The Aranui 5 was borne from demand. People kept asking Tahitibased Compagnie Polynésienne de Transport Maritime for passage to the far-flung islands it serviced with freighters.
By way of reply, it commissioned the Aranui line of ships.
While the Aranui 5’ s front end is dedicated to cargo, its rear is composed of eight tropically accented passenger decks that host four bars, a restaurant, lounge space, a spa, a swimming pool and 103 cabins that range from eight-person dormitories to multi-room suites.
On the Aranui 5, the crew spends its off time in the same bars and lounges as passengers. Buy a round; banter in French; learn about their islands; listen as they sing Polynesian folk songs late into the night in elegant, improvised harmonies, accompanied by the bright tones of ukuleles and guitars; listen if they impart advice:
“If someone’s wearing a flower on their left ear, it means they’re taken,” aseaman says one night. “A flower on their right ear means they’re looking. But both ears?” He laughs. “That mean they’re taken — and looking.”
One of the Aranui 5’s waiters even doubles as an on-board tattooist. With carved bones thrust through his earlobes, boars’ tusks dangling around his neck and blue-black ink creeping up his face, Moana Kohumoetini cuts an imposing figure.
Yet the soft-spoken Marquesan is a scholar of his art. On this cruise alone, and only after lengthy interviews, he inks a half-dozen passengers, one, 79.
“If you don’t tattoo foreigners,” Kohumoetini says, “the history of Marquesan tattooing will disappear.”
Typically, the Aranui 5’s passengers tend to be a greyed, albeit adventurous crowd. To keep spirits high, there’s Nahau Napuauhi.
Muscle-bound, tattooed and smiling, the ship’s entertainer almost always seems to be in some form of undress. He could be strumming a ukulele in a loincloth, on deck as a shirtless fitness instructor, a lounge singer with an unbuttoned busy shirt, a nearly-naked Marquesan warrior pulling you onto the dance floor, or just himself, chilling by the pool in his board shorts.
“I get the party going!” the affable 30-year-old says. “But I also like to share my culture. I like them to see. I like it when . . . they’re like, ‘Ah! This is new, man. This is Polynesian!’”
The six Marquesan islands we visit are unique, each surely someone’s idea of paradise. The one that steals my heart is Ua Pou.
Towering spires of volcanic rock rise above the island, like cloud-obscured sentinels in coats of green. We moor in Hakahau, a beachfront village brimming with bougainvillea.
It’s here I meet Jean Louis Kohumoetini, the 37-year-old leader of the island’s To a Naiki dance troupe.
From a stone platform where sacred rituals have been practised for centuries, the multi-generational haka troupe sings euphoric airs and performs wild grunting pantomimes of violence and seduction to pounding percussion.
Sinewy, chiselled and swathed with intricate Polynesian tattoos, Kohumoetini brandishes a carved wooden war club as he dances, frizzy hair untamed, nearly bare body adorned with feathers, beads and bones.
Later, Kohumoetini — or “Rasta” as the farmer likes to be called — says haka isn’t merely for entertaining tourists.
“I want to be with the spirits,” he says, warrior face paint melting into sweat after a mesmerizing performance. “When we dance, it’s like we’re connected to another world.”
The Aranui 5 makes two calls to the island — one to discharge cargo, an- other to collect containers — and on the second visit, Rasta agrees to meet up.
This time, he’s ditched the war paint and loincloth for shorts, a faded tank top and mirrored sunglasses. I hop into his pickup truck and we’re soon twisting up mountain roads, Bob Marley blaring over a tinny stereo.
Rasta points out his small home nestled high up a valley before stopping at a tiny clearing, the entrance to his family’s land, where a weatherworn stone tiki stands alongside a petroglyph of a turtle, the intermediary between the ancient Polynesians’ temporal and spiritual worlds.
“Before, only male sorcerers would come here,” Rasta says. Because of the tiki’s “mana,” or spiritual power, he says ordinary people would never dare walk near.
Nearby at a stunning beach, deserted save for a herd of languid cows, Rasta opens bottles of fruit-flavoured beer and talks about spearhunting wild goat and pig in the surrounding hills with his friends, dancing around beach bonfire barbecues, then sleeping in the sand.
“Everything is back,” he says, watching the waves crash into the quiet cove. “Our culture has been anchored in the islands again.” Daniel Otis was hosted by Tahiti Tourisme and Compagnie Polynesienne de Transport Maritime, which did not review or approve this story.